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<center>http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...een/Billy4.jpg</center>
The Rider
A single head light glared down the midnight washed highway. The rider was bruised, bloody, and beat. There had been four. Mostly fists, one had a two by four. Yet, another tried to pull a blade half way through. He got his arm broken. In three places. In the end the rider walked away on his own as the others, the ones that could still move, crawled. He knew it would be like this. The fact was, trouble, in any and every form always found him. No matter where he ran, or for how long. Because in the end, he was there. So the fights would start, and his ugly business in the criminal world would, once again, continue. The rider could barely remember a time when it wasn't like this.
It was inevitable everyone the rider knew would go. Sometimes death would claim them, sometimes it would be by his own accord, but mostly by theirs. He had long since learned to accept this, and live-if you called it living-on. Only on three accounts did it hurt so bad the rider almost didn't make it. A friend, a woman, and a grandfather. One died because of him. One turned their back on him because of what he had became, and the other he left behind, because he couldn't stand the ever growing contempt he saw in those eyes.
So he rode on. Sometimes to a town, sometimes to a city, sometimes nowhere.
Running.
Searching.
Hiding.
Eventually they would find him. Or he them. And it would began again. It didn't matter if it was gun running or a chop shop, because he had done those, and everything in-between. At the end of the day he was still who he was. A thug, a brute, a criminal.
The man in black with hatefull eyes and blood on his soul.
Most of his morals had been lost long ago. But one the rider kept close, like a dying man clutching to a Saint Christopher's medallion.
Never willingly hurt the innocent.
It wasn't much, and these days the innocent was a vanishing breed. But the rider kept the oath none-the-less.
That single eye glared on as highway passed beneath him. A sign, green and worn read a single name:
Rhydin.
The rider had come.
<font color="#FFCC00" size="1">[ September 20, 2005 06:15 PM: Message edited by: The Rider ]</font>
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The low places. Every city had them. A bar, an abandoned warehouse or maybe a restaurant. Street corners and back alleys were amongst them, along with a hundred others. The places where dark deeds were performed by darker men. Roads that were hidden on the highways. Roads that lead to the real people who ran the cities.
The rider knew them well. Sure, they changed in each metropolis but all you had to do to find them was look.
And the rider was good at looking. Asking. Sometimes with a fist full of cash. Other times with just fists. And sometimes, he asked hard.
Real hard.
But eventually he found what he was seeking. Two assholes. Nothing but trash in cheap suites...
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It had been a long night. A night where the tattooed brute moved, not with the shadows, but against them with a long legged, arrogant stride that spoke of a fool. Or a man who had hunted streets like these before. Or both.
But it wasn't over.
He had gotten a lot of answers tonight. Most of them, he didn't like. But once you find yourself on the path to hell, it was hard to retrace your steps back out.
Billy had been on that path his whole life.
A dark gaze, eyes dead to this world, squinted up at the tall building before him. It was a hotel. The crooked path the Rider had been following all night led here. A party on the fourth floor.
And the rain beat down around him with a vengeance compared only to God himself.
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Slowly the Rider moved from the side walk and headed for the parking garage. Water splashing with each slow step he took.
It was a long wait, but Billy had the patience. Three hours in all, but when the two men, Sullivan and Rosso, followed by their small entourage of three goons and two whores, appeared from the elevator, the Rider knew it was worth it. He wasn't fatuous enough to think he could just walk into the party on the forth floor and take what he wanted. But in the belly of this building, with five assholes, half already drunk, and poor lighting, he had the edge.
From behind the pillar he emerged. Hard rubber boot heels announcing his presence, but too late for them. Both hands raised, either one holding the small framed Colt officer model . 45. Five rounds a piece. Ten all together. That was more then enough for cheap hoods like these.
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Once the gunshots, masked by the thunder outside, died, Miranda and Cathy spared one, shivering, weeping look over the hood of the Lexis they had taken refuge behind. The man in black, the one that was tattooed so bad you couldn't tell skin from cloths, who had melted from the shadows, was now standing over the remains of their party. Smoking guns still in hand. Rosso was screaming. And that made them cower once again. But the man spoke. And he spoke to them.
"Tell them, they know why these men are dead."
And then silence.
The two working girls waited a full ten minutes before peeking back over the car. They saw that the man had gone. And with him he had taken Rosso.
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Rosso awoke. He didn't recognize his surroundings, but it appeared to be a room. Nothing in it, or he couldn't tell because his back was to the window and the room itself was pitch black. There was a fire in his stomach, one that turned his bowels into molting lava. He was about to speak, maybe to plead, or maybe to curse.
But we will never know.
"I'm going to ask you a series of questions. You will answer them. Maybe not at first, Rosso, but in the end you will answer them all."
And for the briefest of moments the room was alight as the speaker lit a cigarette. What Rosso saw in that briefest of moments made the man scream.
Billy got his answers. His names. One above all was repeated in his own mind.
But before Rosso was thrown through the window, Billy said one name himself. So the thug knew why he had been to hell on earth.
Billy Jean.
Never break the code: Innocents will never be harmed willingly. Children are never to be touched by a violent or sexual hand. And woman shall never be raped.
But even as the Rider moved from the window, a small pool of blood collecting at his feet, that name echoed in his mind. The name of Rosso's employer. And now he knew he would die in this city.
Because of a woman he barely knew.
That was a cop.
Life was funny.
(OOC: Billy Jean was not raped, just attacked. My Billy doesn't know that though.)
<font color="#FFCC00" size="1">[ September 20, 2005 01:37 PM: Message edited by: The Rider ]</font>
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Who wouldn't notice the fire in your eyes
Or the bitter direction of impending good-byes
I'm fallen and folded and wilted in place
At the sight of you standing with streaks down your face
-Clark Guy
Good-byes
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The cabin had been a heaven long lost to the rider. A secluded, safe structure in a land full of dangers. But really, that wasn't why it had held that divine, sacred air. Why his leather-bound heart had skipped a beat when he stepped inside. It was something between slow, sultry jazz playing in the back ground, and the smell of a freshly home cooked meal. One that took concentration, time, and consideration.
But more so then that, it had been her.
Billy Jean.
A quick smile and a look of proud accomplishment. It had made the Rider forget who he had been.
Who he was.
Maybe, for a minute, the Rider thought about who they could be.
But no man nor beast can walk on ice and expect not to fall.
And fall they did. In a swirling tendril of screams and tears. Of hateful accusations.
This time though, he had been the messenger. Not the liar. The teller of truth not the keeper. And when she looked at him that way, it hurt a heart he had thought had been long lost.
Jackson had been a crooked cop. Did they come in any other kind? Billy thought they did. Now. Maybe the small, fragile, trusting kind. The kind of a person that will encounter life with fire in their eyes and justice deep in their soul. They walk a line, straight and narrow, thinking others like them are right beside. Trying to forge a way into that brave new world of greed and darkness.
Eventually they learn.
Usually the hard way.
The Rider cursed Jackson as he walked from that cabin, for every spilt tear. And, maybe, he cursed himself.
